Posted
by
timothy
on Friday May 04, 2012 @06:48PM
from the this-could-change-my-mind-when-widespread dept.

Overly Critical Guy writes "Auto makers are launching a universal EV charger that charges an electric vehicle in 15 to 20 minutes. The standard, called Combined Charging System, has been approved by the Society of Automotive Engineers and ACEA, the European association of vehicle manufacturers, as the standard for fast-charging electric vehicles."

Often when it comes to fast charge solutions, the quoted time is to reach 80% charge. The remaining 20% usually take a relatively long time because it's slower to charge a battery that's almost fully charged. You can see this in action pretty clearly if you own a laptop.

Electric vehicles use zero power while stopped, and damned little while moving slowly in stop-and-go with regenerative braking. It's maintaining the highway speeds that kills the battery faster. This isn't like an internal combustion engine, which makes peak efficiency at more-or-less highway speeds and wastes power idling in traffic.

That may sound like a snarky answer, but it's not. There's a huge number of engineering design decisions and tradeoffs that one can make, and you can basically pick and choose your ability to deal with different challenges by how much you care about them versus other challenges -- namely, cost and energy density. Of course, today's LiPos and spinels have advanced so much that it's not hard at all to deal

So, your commute was about a mile and a half each way? Would you even bother driving that kind of distance?

In parts of the world there is no alternative. I remember seeing a nice restaurant across a highway from a hotel in Texas once, and after wandering around for a bit I realised the only way to get to t was to get in the car, drive half a mile to an exit with a loop under, then drive back again.

So, your commute was about a mile and a half each way? Would you even bother driving that kind of distance?

I used to commute half that distance.

Sure, it's only three quarters of a mile, why not break the American mold, get some exercise, and save money in the process? Because I always sucked at playing Frogger, that's why. There are no sidewalks, there are no crosswalks, and there is no respect for pedestrians between here and there. It's good exercise running like hell trying to avoid getting hit by cars going 20 mph over the speed limit, true enough, but running for your life tends to make you show up for w

Valid question. But for something like the Volt, they only operate the battery from ~30% capacity to 80% capacity, which means you can fast charge a "full charge". Most batteries don't have to slow the charging until somewhere over 90% capacity.

Better question is how many KWh can it deliver in 15 mins? Since vehicle battery capacities vary significantly, that's the relevant question.

Which is exactly why I asked the question. How much power can it deliver in 15 minutes? It will have maximum voltage and amperage that the connection is capable of delivering, yielding a maximum power it can deliver, yielding a maximum energy it can deliver. And the commonly used unit for measuring electric energy is KWh.

So again, how many KWh can it deliver in 15 mins? Everything else is secondary.

According to http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-57427823-54/automakers-heres-how-well-charge-evs-in-15-20-minutes/ it is rated at 500 volts at 200 amps. So the total KWh for fifteen minutes would be 25.

First, why would you ever need such fast charging in your house? No, seriously -- why? Given that you can't "rapid-charge" your gas car at home -- nay, can't "charge" it at all at home -- and that there's really no point, since you only need rapid charge on long trips...

Not sure exactly what you're asking, but I'll try to answer anyway. Converting AC power uses transformers which have no theoretical limits as to power conversion. You can convert a 1V input to a 1,000V output if you so choose. The catch is just that transforms maintain the same total power (volts * amps) between input and output - if you double the voltage you halve the current.

If you could draw 200amps from a 240v source you could convert that to 96 amps at 500V easily enough, and then convert it to DC

When you fuel your gas car the average [chemical] power of the connection is 8 MW.

But that's the difference - it does not take as much power to pump the fuel to my car, so it can be done pretty fast (full tank from empty in a couple of minutes), it is even possible to do it manually (using a gas canister) if car ran out of gas before you reached the station.

Usually the problem with small batteries is that they cannot supply a lot of power, even if they have a lot of energy. I am most familiar with lead-acid batteries (the kind that is used in a UPS), if you discharge them in 10 minutes or so, the real capacity becomes very small compared to the rated capacity (which is rated for a 20 hour discharge).

the battery would have to have large capacity and be able to deliver it in 10 minutes or less

Not really.

The battery would be plugged in and stay in the car. Maybe even automatically switch it to an energy conservation mode to get it to the nearest charging station. For longer (remote area) rescues, you could probably even hire/use a battery or generator trailer.

That will require even more power. While the average power consumption of a car might be manageable for a small battery, the initial acceleration may be a problem. Add in lights and heating (it may be -20C outside). And it results in a battery that I would like to have for my UPS:) After all, it has to be affordable.

I actually did the math once, and it is feasible. You need, of course, the more expensive, higher power cells to do it. And you don't want it just sitting around unused in the vehicle, because of course any batteries in the vehicle should be going to good use; it should be connected to the vehicle's electric system in normal operation. But if you have a detachable battery section, you can have 20-30 pounds of cells with shoulder straps and a hip belt for walking to the nearest farmhouse, charge on 110V/1

It is possible to carry some extra gasoline in a canister in the trunk, so if I run out, I can pour the gasoline from the canister to the tank. Did that a few times. Even if the canister was empty (or I forgot to bring it with me), I could still go to the nearest gas station on foot, buy the canister if I don't have one, fill it and bring it to my car, pour the gasoline to the tank and drive to the gas station. My dad did that once.

8MW is a measure of power, but it's irrelevant to the question at hand. Gas powered vehicles waste most of the energy in gasoline. Heat, friction, conversion efficiency, etc. So the theoretical power flowing through a fuel hose has only an indirect relationship to the amount of power an EV will require to theoretically be able to "charge" as quickly as you can refuel.

Gasoline engines of around 100 HP are at efficiency from 25% to 30%. An EV that is 100% efficient would need to transfer energy at the rate of about 2 MW to match the energy density of hydrocarbon fuels (and the fueling time.)

There is another way to calculate it. As we know,

The Volt is propelled by an electric motor with a peak output of 111 kW (149 hp) delivering 273 lb-ft (368 N-m) of torque. (Wikipedia.)

If we presume that this motor is sufficient for all modes of operation (probably true) then we can say that the car takes 110 kW to run at 80 mph. If we want the range to be 300 miles (which is on the lower edge of usual ranges but will certainly do for an EV) then we need to drive for 4 hours. This will consume 440 kWh.

If the charger can transfer 2 MW of power then the charging will take 13.2 minutes. This does not include issues of battery cooling that will certainly arise at that rate of charging.

Considering that 80 mph is not the most efficient speed, the actual energy needs and the charging time will be somewhat smaller - like 10 minutes - but I don't know how much energy it may take to run Volt at different speeds.

All true, aside from the "irrelevant" part: power capacity is very nearly the only relevant factor in an electric-vehicle charging system, aside from the obvious safety considerations. Electric vehicles do indeed require somewhat less energy to travel a given distance. However, all those factors combined only make an ideal (100% efficient) electric vehicle about 3-5 times more energy-efficient (gasoline being somewhere between 20% and 30%), whereas the 8MW delivered by a gas pump is 200 times the GP's estimated 40 kW charging rate. Whether the target is 8MW or 1MW, we're still a long way from matching the recharge rate possible with chemical energy.

Apparently you haven't been keeping up with battery technology. Toshiba's SCiB [toshiba.com] charges in 10 mins. Been shipping for a few years now. Other researchers have reported similar capabilities in the lab.

Well, they mean the system they're proposing will support charging your vehicle in as little as 15 minutes.
i.e. The connector supports lots of different fast-charging options ( 3 phase AC, High Voltage DC) and can handle the current required* to charge in 15 minutes.
*Naturally, YMMV - since you need to be able to source the current required, charging times are dependent upon battery size, etc.

But it does allow people to start planning service stations with some confidence that they will be able to service the bulk of the fleet, instead of needing charge stations for each car.

The 15 to 20 minutes is a reasonable amount of time as well. By the time you refill your coffee, pump the bilge, buy the snack, your car would be ready.

This also allows restaurants and coffee shops on major highways to start installing charge stations in their lots. They sell you the juice while you are having your lunch. We could see gas stations disappear in our life time. (Well, maybe in your life time).

Standardization of basic infrastructure like this is a key hurdle for EVs to gain market share. But the typical (and optimistic) 100 mile range of a Battery Electric Vehicle is still a killer for anything but around town driving.

By the time you refill your coffee, pump the bilge, buy the snack, your car would be ready.

*And* wait in line for the one or two EVs in front of you to finish.

You're thinking like someone who can't break out of the "gas station" mentality - there's no reason for the cars to line up to get electricity from a small number of pumps that deliver liquid in the same way that gasoline or diesel is delivered. You can simply have a row of parking spaces with a connector in each one, or you put them in parking lots at the grocery store so that you recharge while you shop, or at the movie theatre, or at work etc.

A traditional gas station can simply have a set of parking spaces off to the side with a connector for each one. Positioning of charge sockets is much more flexible since it's just running a copper cable, not pipes full of liquid with the necessary pumps and so on.

I'm going to be a pure cynic here, but when we start seeing tons of cables sticking out at parking lots, we will start seeing vandals either cutting them (which was common with pay phone connectors), or making some device to short out leads just so they can see the arcs fly. The current (and voltage) needed to charge an EV quickly will make a lot of fireworks if short-circuited.

We will see drunks piss on a cable, then their next of kin sue the station and everyone else upstream.

I don't see it as any more dangerous than large tanks of gasoline, or above-ground propane tanks and transformers and so on.

We already have three phase outlets that can deliver that sort of punch and I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that circuit breakers and other such safety systems will be a major part of any EV charging system - like they are for any high voltage/high power electrical system in use today.

We will see drunks piss on a cable, then their next of kin sue the station and everyone else upstream.

These problems have already been solved.

The Japanese fast charging standard CHAdeMO has both power delivery as well as a CAN bus data connection in the "nozzle".A communications channel is opened, and a diagnostic run on the battery system to determine there are no problems before power is even engaged to the pump.

Shorting out the CAN data lines will do nothing. Unless your piss can speak binary using the right protocol and sending the right responses up the line, there will be no power to harm you.

Unless your piss can speak binary using the right protocol and sending the right responses up the line, there will be no power to harm you.

Luxury. When I was a lad, we had to flatten our own dried feces and perforate it into punched cards to mail to the local petroleum distillery, and two to three weeks later a salesman would come out to beat us with a rubber hose -- if we were lucky.

A few years ago I was in Boston, and heard a PSA on the radio. It was Mayor Menino talking about prostate cancer screenings... but it seemed like he wasn't sure how to pronounce it. About half the time he said "prostate", the other half he said "prostrate".

Then I realized that they probably recorded multiple takes, and this was the best one they could get.

The question was answered in your first sentence. You have to realize that in Boston, the letter R has zero meaning. You're allowed to remove any R from any word or add an extra R anywhere in any word.

This just in, gas stations rolling out new chargers that will charge your vehicle for a whole week and it will only take 2 minutes. Please have your credit card handy.

That's a fair point, but I could still see this being very practical if it's the type of thing you could do at home. I really like the idea of not having to worry about whether or not my car has enough "juice" (be it gasoline or electricity) because it gets fully charged every night.

While I see your point, the result of this will be that we're going to see "refueling stations" pop up in a lot of heretofore unexpected places. To start, without the need for gas to be trucked in and stored locally they don't need the same infrastructure that a regular gas station does. Because of this, you can simply install one or two of these in common parking areas. Then, imagine going to a mall where you can park, plug in to a station (I'd imagine a handful per row, not one per spot) and do your shopping. Even if you're not in there long enough to get a full charge, you're still better off than you once were. It's also an extra feature that can be touted by various shopping locales to get people to shop there, and then combined with loyalty cards for "fuel" discounts for further enticements.

The main issue I see with this is how to make sure that while you're away someone doesn't unplug the charger, plug it into their own car, charge for a few minutes, and drive off. I haven't seen the spec, but including the ability (if not making it mandatory) that when unplugging the charger the transaction ceases sounds like a good idea. That opens its own problems to pranking, but I'd think most people would prefer not having a fully-charged car to having a fully-charged car and also paying for someone else's fully-charge car.

Some sort of locking mechanism with a key (like subway/airport lockers, before TERRERISTS made them go away) might be an option, but that introduces another set of problems and seems outside the goal of this spec.

I can also see large companies with their own campuses, especially the likes of Apple or Google, installing these in their parking lots for employees and using a "co-op" setup, where the employees get the charge at cost or barely above. If they included some sort of valet system (I wouldn't be surprised if they already had something like that at the larger facilities), cars could be dropped off, charged, and parked once done on a rotating basis.

In short, gas stations as we understand them will die off with the use of gasoline (assuming it ever does so) and new options will emerge that will work with the extended refuel time. Also, if the 15-20 minutes is from near-empty to full charge (What, RTFA? Please.), most people will probably only need 2 minutes worth of charging to make sure they can get back home for short hops. They'll plug in at home and do a long charge overnight.

There are several in my neighborhood, near downtown Chicago, in places you wouldn't expect. The parking lot for Walgreens for example. Other mall parking lots. Commuter train stations which seems like a really great idea, so people can charge their car while they're at work.

I just finished an interesting book about one part of the oil industry, Exxon-Mobil, called Private Empire. It's by Steve Coll, the writer from the New Yorker who's won a couple of Pulitzers. He spent a lot of time talking to Exxon people, and got unprecedented access to the company. He posits that Exxon isn't worried about solar, or wind, or any alternative fuel. The only technology that could present an existential threat to their hegemony as the most powerful corporation in the world (their own military, ambassadors, foreign policy, etc) - the one technology that worries them, is batteries. If there is a significant advance in battery technology, they're screwed. Apparently, they waited too long because of the ideological bent of their last CEO and didn't spend any money researching or acquiring tech that could help them in those areas, and now that their new CEO has (at least publicly) dropped the company's funding of anti-AGW groups, it's too late for them to make any inroads there.

I'm not particularly fond of Exxon-Mobil as a company. I don't buy gas (or soda pop, or cigarettes, or candy bars) from Exxon-Mobil and will drive an extra couple of miles to shop with a company that isn't quite so evil (Sunoco is my favorite). But the book was a fascinating read.

By the way, there are a couple of start-ups right here in Illinois that have been doing pretty well with research (partnered with UofIllinois) and development and manufacture of batteries for electric automobiles. Couple of thousand people working in a pretty hard-hit part of the state. They export batteries to Europe and Asia. They got start-up money from the DoE, just like Solyndra, but these companies have succeeded and one has already paid back all the government money with interest.

Does anyone think that we have reached some sort of absolute limit on the ability of batteries to power automobiles? I don't know enough about the technology to know one way or the other.

Heads-up: DC fast charging (L3) is NOT designed to replace the normal "slow" L1/L2 AC charging. At least with current battery technologies, frequent fast charging will dramatically reduce the lifespan of your battery pack and is discouraged by the manufacturers. Fast chargers should ONLY show up in places where people need emergency charging or need to make 100-300 mile hops between urban centers. When you do use them, expect to pay about as much as you would for a tank of gas. You'll want to avoid this as much as possible so you can actually save money by operating your EV.

Fast chargers are significantly more expensive to install than L2 (220VAC) chargers because they normally require *battery buffers* to reduce peak load on the grid. Commercial parking lots will almost never opt for expensive fast chargers when the standard L2 chargers provide about 30 miles of range in one hour, more than enough to aid your customers and much easier on your wallet and theirs alike.

The primary charging method of all EVs will still be slow-charging at home, just like you do with your smart phone. It's cheaper, easier, and takes less of your time than waiting around 15 minutes for it to finish at some dingy gas station. There is absolutely no reason to use fast chargers but in exceptional circumstances.

These are the "new options" that you speak of. Parking = Charging is where we need to be, and it will cover the vast majority of EV operating hours. The DC fast chargers are only to fill in the gaps between parked chargers, not some sort of "gas station replacement". The whole point of the electric vehicle is to do away with the gas station model and simply live off the grid, getting power whenever and wherever you happen to be.

What you point out is precisely the reason why Nissan has been considering giving out car rental coupons to Leaf buyers. It makes a lot of sense; but there are other cases, like when you live in NY and want to go to DC for the week, where getting a fast-charge along the way is the difference between using your nice BEV and paying for a whole week's rental.

What you say about range is correct, but all the decent BEVs on the market now (except the Volt) have a range of about 100 miles and can do round-trip c

To start, without the need for gas to be trucked in and stored locally they don't need the same infrastructure that a regular gas station does. Because of this, you can simply install one or two of these in common parking areas.

The same argument could be made for natural gas. And no, you don't want one of these in a common parking area. In a word, children. Anything that can dump several thousand watts of juice into a vehicle in that short of a time can be fucked with, and probably with deadly results. Also... unlike a gas station, the use of these pretty much mandates the use of credit cards... I haven't found an unattended gas station with a cash reader... ever. I like cash -- it works when the power goes out, the computer fouls

Spend about $36.00 in 5 minutes to drive for another 350 miles or about $3.00 in 20 to drive about another 64 miles (assuming comparable subcompacts, highway miles). Keep in mind, you will spend that 5 minutes fueling at a gas station, where you can charge at home and possibly at work, play, and shopping. So, if your idle time is really valuable, or you just go on long trips frequently, you may want to keep a gas car around.

I putter along at about 25 miles per day, with the odd 200 mile trip every few mo

That gas station charger also uses materials that are here for a limited time only. These materials will keep getting more expensive, until most people cannot afford to use it every day.

What do you mean? Do you mean in its construction; being made of plastic etc? The syngas process solves that one handily, plus there are a large number of materials you can use that are non fossil-fuel derived. Plus, the material resource cost of a physical object that is designed to last a long time is not comparable to a fuel that you simply burn once and then lose forever. Less material goes into the physical product, it can be recycled afterwards, it can be made of alternative materials etc. Not to ment

Frequent fast charging will only be safe once we transition from conventional Li-Ion and Li-Poly batteries to a totally new chemistry like Li-Air. There is simply no way for the batteries we have now to absorb energy that quickly without overstressing the internal components. I know Ford has a fancy liquid cooling system on the Focus EV battery, but they have no fast charge port whatsoever.

I own a LEAF, and I've heard no such recommendation. They recommend against multiple quick charges per day, but I haven't seen anything about twice a month. You don't want to put the battery through a quick charge when the batteries are real hot, but a battery pack is not going to hold heat for multiple days. Sorry, the thermal mass isn't that high.

Now, they do tell you that the less you quick charge, the longer your battery will last. They say that regular quick charging will leave you with 70% capacity after 8 or 10 years (I can't remember the quoted "lifetime"), and 80% capacity at "end of life" if you don't quick charge, but just use 110V trickle charging and 220V normal charging.

That's not exactly frying your batteries early.

Don't hold your breath on your non-RTFM scenario, dude. First of all, EV owners know the dominant strategy for charging is always going to be charging at home. Very few people are going to be doing a lot of quick charging (maybe cab drivers?). Quick charging is likely to be significantly more expensive per kWh than charging at home, and people just don't buy LEAFs if they do a lot of long-distance (100 miles+) driving. If they did, they'd but a Volt.

Does it drive "just like a car"? I drive a diesel minivan with a manual gearbox, so I assume it's a lightyear away from that but I'd be interested if it was similar to an automatic car (except with none of the sluggish slushmatic non-performance).

This is endorsed by Audi, BMW, Chrysler, Daimler, Ford, GM, Porsche and Volkswagen. Tesla is conspicuously missing. The Tesla Roadster and the Tesla Model S are the only electric cars in or near production that are close to road-trip worthy, so the omission is unfortunate.

Actually, yes, it's cheap. You need two IGBTs per phase, as well as a lot of capacitance, and you need both of those for the motor drive (inverter) anyway. The marginal cost of high power charging is negligible, once you've got the inverter on board.

I would guess the Tesla is absent because their battery packs are made from 6000-7000 laptop batteries and can't take rapid charging. They are in "production" because they use a $40000 battery pack that no one else thought was a good idea.

And predictably, the only 2 major players in the EV market now, Nissan and Mitsubishi, will just stick to the only widely-deployed fast-charge connector to date, CHAdeMO http://www.chademo.com/ [chademo.com]

By announcing this new American-only Frankenplug, the SAE only helps delaying the (IMHO much-needed) EV adoption in the US and related charging infrastructure. But that's probably exactly what Chrysler & Co want, so they have more time catching up with the Japanese automakers...

What the J1772 CCS standard has going for it is that it's a free-license standard. (And that it can be covered by a single round "fuel cap".) All those cheapskate developing countries don't want to pay CHAdeMO royalties on every single connector they build, so once China starts producing them en masse the cost for the rest of us will come down. Unless CHAdeMO opens up its standard, it will slowly be eclipsed by the free standard.

Or, consumers will get frustrated that they never have the right plug in the right place, and give up on L3 charging altogether, which doesn't help anyone. Really not sure how this one is going to play out.

Something just dawned on me... They have made a standard for this connection... and you're going to be trapped at the charging station for 20min... How long do you think it will take them to include a data connection along with the plug and the car companies allow them to flood your car with ads for 20min as part of the payment for the charge?

Not to mention that at 20 minutes, I'm not going to a 'gas' station. I'm going to the grocery store to pick up my food for the week along with the charge. Heck, I fill up there anyway, it'd be even faster for me. No 5 minutes at the pump waiting for the tank to fill, instead it's 30 seconds plugging my car in before I head inside, then 30 seconds disconnecting when I get out.

That or a restaurant, mall, movie theater, etc....

Of course, most the time it'd simply be charged at home, maybe work. Charging outside of there would be when I'm traveling, and 300 mile range EVs like the Tesla would be running dry about the time I need to stop for a break & food anyways.

Not to mention that at 20 minutes, I'm not going to a 'gas' station. I'm going to the grocery store to pick up my food for the week along with the charge. Heck, I fill up there anyway, it'd be even faster for me.

You an idiot to believe you grocery store will have a charging station or that I won't unplug your car and use your money to charge my car instead.

You're an idiot to not read up on how the connector works - it makes a data connection with the car so it knows who is using it. If you plugged it into your car it would know that and start to charge you (money, and electricity) instead. The fact that you're a douche and unplugged someone else's (lockable) charger is not something unique to the two of you having electric cars. You're probably the guy who doesn't put the cart back after shopping and just leaves it blocking a space or just push it away so it crashes into someone else's car.

One of the things I've discovered is that I almost never need to charge away from home. I've been driving my Leaf for a year and so far I've charged at public stations 3 times, and really only one of those times did I really need to.

Ask yourself this question. If you could fill up your gasoline car in your own garage, how often would you use public gas stations?

I should say not, given that the photo of the plug at the top of the article would obviously never fit into the photo of the socket halfway down. The accompanying plug photo in the second photo may not have the same problem (at least the two parts of the plugs don't protrude different amounts). Anyway, graphic designer fail.

And, for a less-superficial observation, who's going to want to open two port covers on opposite corners of the socket, especially given that both are likely to be sp

Why not make the batteries replaceable? Just switch them as a gas station, simple.

Because it's a stupid idea for reasons we've covered numerous times before.

1. Either you need a standard battery which prevents auto manufacturers from building different vehicles with different batteries, or the replacement station needs to store all possible batteries.2. If you get there with a flat battery and they're out then you're screwed. That's not a big deal for a car where you can drive on to the next gas station twenty miles down the road, but a big problem if your electric car only does eighty miles per charge anyway.3. Replacing batteries that weigh several hundred pounds is far from a simple task.4. No-one wants to pay $30k for a new car, then drive it into a replacement station where they'll hand over their brand new battery and have it replaced by one that's done 500,000 miles.

1. Different vehicles with the same battery profile. Or have standards. Small medium large.2. If you get to a gas station and they are out you are screwed.3. It isnt that hard, there are already prototypes. We refill flying planes with other flying planes and you think this is 'far from simple?4. Then dont include the battery with the car. 20k or whatever for the car and some 'battery insurance' in case you rally your car and the battery falls out. At that point you don't care what condition the battery is

3. It isnt that hard, there are already prototypes. We refill flying planes with other flying planes and you think this is 'far from simple?

Aerial refueling is far from simple, but it is performed by highly trained operators in billion dollar equipment. And you use that to justify why installing 100,000 battery changers, performing hundreds of millions of changes a year, operated by idiot consumers with cheap vehicles is somehow easy? You might as well say "We put a man on the moon, why don't we all travel in miniature scramjet pods?"

etc etc etc please do go on, the one and only problem is getting an entire nation to roll out stations which is expensive with a slow return on investment and getting auto manufacturers to standardize batteries.

So the only problems are that the infrastructure is too expensive to be profitable and the vehicles are too expensive to be profitable. Sure, that sounds totally viable in a free-market economy./sarcasm.

Why are people so obsessed with having gas stations for electric cars? That defeats the whole purpose. Charge the car at home and at work, like your smartphone. No trips out of your way, no cruising for the cheapest price, no waiting by the pump, just a few seconds before and after to plug/unplug. If you need to go long distance, take a train/plane/bus, enjoy the view and relax for once in your life. And if your commute is too long, then you're not in the target demographic anyways.

For the cost of installing battery-swap infrastructure in a handful of locations, we could cover a city with standard charging stations. Then you could charge no matter where you park. Even installing networks of the fast-chargers on major corridors will end up being cheaper and more versatile.

Besides, you've seen how long it took them to agree on a standard for a charging plug. Just think how long it would take them to agree on standards for whole battery packs. By the time they finish, we'll have 400-mile Litihium-Air batteries and hydrogen fuel cell backups, and no one will care anymore.

Besides, you've seen how long it took them to agree on a standard for a charging plug. Just think how long it would take them to agree on standards for whole battery packs. By the time they finish, we'll have 400-mile Litihium-Air batteries and hydrogen fuel cell backups, and no one will care anymore.

What I find hilarious about this is that I've started seeing a number of proposals to switch to parking spot mounted inductive chargers. They're agreeing on a standard plug when the plug might end up going away anyways. In which case you wouldn't even need to spend a minute plugging your car in - just park and accept the charge for the electricity while inside your car(assuming that it's not a subscription and therefore fully automatic).

Sure, there are proposals for inductive charging systems, but they are years away from any reasonable standard, and I don't think "fast charging" speeds are even physically practical at the moment. Inductive charging will always be less efficient than plug charging, and given the likely cost of deploying permanent inductive charging stations, uptake will be slow in markets where the plug works just as well. I certainly don't anticipate everyone digging up their driveways and garages to install them. Besi

The problem with charging at work is that charging everyone's car during peak electric demand hours is a terrible idea. Cars should be charged in the middle of the night with cheaper electricity, not dumped on the grid just as the day starts heating up.

1. Standardized battery packs can only be a good idea. Auto manufactures should develop and conform to standard packs (at least size, shape, and voltage). As battery chemistry progresses, it's not difficult to get the benefit of an upgrade. Just put it in.

2. If you run that close to the edge that you arrive at the station with little or not charge left, you are a fool. That being said, I'm sure that they could spot you with a quick (15 minute charge) so you can get to the next station or get home to do a proper charge.

3. You are not a mechanical engineer, are you? It is not really that hard to build an automated battery swapping system.

4. This is the hard bit. You would get a choice: It comes with a standard capacity (low cost) battery that the dealer/charging stations/whoever owns but you pay a small amount extra per swap. If you want a better battery that you own, then buy one outright, and charg it at you home / work / or other plug in charging station.

exactly! just think about propane tanks. most places i go, they just take your empty tank and hand you a full one. all the rest is engineering and standardization. imagine a car-wash set-up that slips into a keyed channel on the underside of the car the charged battery in front of the depleted one that it slips out.
it's not only not rocket science, it isn't brain surgery.

You'll also notice that while this is standard practice for propane tanks for barbecues, they never swap the tank on your vehicle if you have a propane powered car... probably because it's quite awkward to do so.